I began my journey of moving abroad by taking the ITA Online TEFL Course. During that time, I had no idea where I wanted to move except to Europe. I had a couple friends already living in Europe in the Czech Republic, Germany, and the United Kingdom. However, I decided to move to Spain because I wanted to learn a new language, and Spanish made the most sense being from the States. I originally wanted to move to Barcelona because of the beach and because I had heard amazing things. However, I could not find a way to live there legally. After a discussion with ITA Student Affairs about where to move, they recommended their TEFL Class in Madrid, Spain, in which I could obtain my student visa. With that, I decided to move to Madrid.

I wasn’t able to study abroad in college, so after graduation, my top priority was to live abroad for an extended period of time. Teaching abroad seemed like the most sustainable, feasible option. I enrolled in International TEFL Academy’s online course, worked two jobs to save enough cushion money until I had a consistent paycheck, and set my sites on Hanoi, Vietnam. It was high time for me to “find myself,” “get out of my comfort zone,” “scratch the travel itch,” and “find a cure for my wanderlust”. This is a story about clichés.

People will talk to you about how good it is to “get out of your comfort zone”, and (spoiler alert!!) it is. But why? The answer is multi-faceted, so I want to focus on the role of personal identify in creating one’s comfort zone and how it’s affected when we exit said comfort zone.

October, 2015. I was half-way through the fall semester of my junior year at the University of Maryland with winter break around the corner. My previous winter breaks had been nothing but boring and uneventful as I found it difficult to find a job for only a few weeks. I had no plans to study abroad as I was not as interested as other college students and frankly didn’t try to fit it in my schedule. My parents would have liked to have seen me study abroad, but again, I exhibited a lack of interest. This winter break would be different as I knew that I wanted to go somewhere because my college career would be completed within a year and a half. When else would I be able to travel without having to worry about the responsibilities and constraints of my adult life? After discussing with my parents and a distant cousin in Germany, I decided to book a ticket to Europe for the upcoming January. I would be going solo and viewed this as an experience to see the world and I guess the cliché “find myself”. I returned from my trip just in time for the spring semester and I discovered my true passion: traveling and seeing the world and its many cultures.

It’s the summer before my senior year of college; I am teaching swim lessons and working with a public defender. My parents come up to me one day and ask me the dreaded question, “SO are you going to start those grad school applications?” Grad school applications? At this point I was completely at a loss, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and thought that going to grad school without a goal in mind would be a complete waste of time. So, I began to look for an alternative solution. Knowing that I liked to travel and enjoyed teaching, teaching abroad was a great option. I then began my TEFL course and in the Fall of 2017 I headed off to teach English in Ashdod, Israel, in an elementary school for ten months, promising my parents that I would return in the fall for grad school.

Usually, people who teach English in Japan are able to save a lot of money while doing so, especially if they live in a small city like the one in which I currently reside. When I accepted the job on the JET Program, I knew that my salary would be quite nice and that I would have the opportunity to save money if I wanted to. However, more than saving money, what I really wanted to do was travel around Asia -- a part of the world that I had never visited before.

When my husband and I were living in Barcelona back in 2014, we would’ve never guessed that in a few short months, we would be packing our bags and heading for the first time to Asia, specifically Singapore, to settle down for years to come. While living in Barcelona, I had been taking the 170-hour Online TEFL/TESOL course with the International TEFL Academy, and I was ready to put it to use.

When I was doing my online TEFL class with International TEFL Academy, I was dreaming of beaches and classy resorts. After doing some exploring in the world, it turns out that developing countries are by far my preference. Unexpectedly to me, Cambodia has my heart over anywhere else. Countries that are still a work in progress have the biggest hearts, amazing food, best prices, and they’re definitely the most interesting. But there are some things I didn’t know was going to happen. These things can throw you off balance at times, but they’re actually the best parts.

Here are 8 things I didn’t realize before I ran off into developing countries and what I learned from them:

I have always been a “pleaser” as my family lovingly calls me. I am the mediator. I am the happy camper. The person who makes sure that everyone is doing fine and dandy at the expense of my own wants and needs. I have always been that way, and most of the time I see it as a good quality, one that should be appreciated because I want to contribute to others’ happiness and well being. It is part of who I am. However, as I have gotten older and a little bit wiser, and especially since traveling abroad, I have realized that this is a quality that is not always a good thing. I realized that I was not speaking up for myself and what I wanted. I was not putting myself first. That all began to change when I went to teach English abroad in China.

I moved to a country I knew nothing about. It’s a country the world definitely doesn’t know enough about. Using the small dose of confidence I gained from International TEFL Academy’s online TEFL certification course, I agreed to live with a local family in a Cambodian village to teach little kids and adults English.

I never thought that I would become an ESL teacher. It wasn’t one of those set plans that I had for myself from an early age. Sometimes, life can’t be predicted and you end up being somewhere else than you originally intended. I think that this happens for the better most times, and I can say for certain that my life has been better off with my past experiences of teaching English as a Second Language. It’s been a roller coaster ride but a fun and exciting one at that.